Emily Stillman
 

My inspiration was the book “My Name is Yoon” written by Helen Recorvits and illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska. In this book, a young girl named Yoon moves to the United States from Korea and grapples with learning her name in English and her identity in her new school.

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The lesson for this book is to explore students’ names and their meaning. In the book, Yoon tries out different names until she becomes comfortable celebrating her own. For this project, students will get to draw a picture that they feel represents them, and connects to their name implicitly or explicitly. They will draw large “Hello, My Name Is…” sticker-inspired pieces that they can keep on their desks alongside their written name tag. These name tags will (if done at the beginning of the year) help me and the students learn and remember each others’ names and something about them based on their drawing. It will serve as a visual reminder and representation of the students!

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This lesson is for my fifth grade class but could definitely be done K-8 in some capacity. I had fun creating it and even more fun figuring out how it would fit into my classroom. I think this project can be done with a low budget. All we need is paper and some kind of drawing materials. A laminator would be ideal to preserve the name tags but it is not necessary. I think that this lesson is great practice with figurative language, including representing oneself using symbols and metaphors. It also is a chance for students to make explicit and implicit connections between their names and their interests.